“The Language of Rain”Understand the language of rain and know of what it speaks;in the night’s darkness [descend]and in the morning light awakens again.I want to be: a flower of snow and ice,a thorn on the stalk of a rose,a drop upon the red-hot stone,a budding grain in the field,the foam on raging water;a rock does not doubt it and ask.I want to be like a treeand hear what the rain says to me:vai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vaiPerhaps life is only a dream,only a game of fantasy,only a mirror in spacious room: dejavu.Then the end becomes a beginning;the origin becomes a destinationand a sorrow without sense or meaning.Understand the language of rainas if an encoded/encrypted poem,as leaves will waft over autumn forests,as a lake glistens with light in the morning,As cherry blossoms bloom in spring,as a bird builds a nest in the bush,as coals in the fire smolder out—the sky arrived at as smoke. I want to free myself like a springfrom all that oppresses me today,want to be 10,000 years oldand hear what the rain recounts: it saysvai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vai não vouvai vai vai vaiPerhaps life is only a dream,only a game of fantasy,only a mirror in spacious room: dejavu.Then the end becomes a beginning;the origin becomes a destinationand a sorrow without sense or meaning.Understand the language of rain,conceiving–full–what it says;in the night’s darkness [descend]and in the morning, as light, awaken.

This experiment involves signing off of all social media sites like it’s Lent and I have self control. It is Thursday of week one, and since Monday I have:

Taken zero cat pictures
Eaten five undocumented meals (two were foreign but non-violent, -criminal, or -rapey)
Charged my Fitbit
Learned how legs work
Used a bike for more than home decor
Finished a project more than three minutes before deadline
Read some books (smart ones)
Pondered how to provide a more enriching life for the cat
Picked up a smoking habit
Quit smoking (like a boss)
Wrote in a notebook with a sharpened graphite stick
Discovered hand cramps
Went to bed sober
Unfriended zero trolls
Liked some stuff off the record
Put laundry away like a motherfuckin grown up (without threat)
Tidied up without danger of imminent visitation
Lost cell phone for 24-hours before indulging a nervous breakdown
Met some millennials I did not immediately hate
Postured entitled condescension only once (while buying organic vegetables)
Read petty drama in the comments none
Seriously contemplated suicide and murder not even once

]]>https://thepoetsglass.com/2016/06/23/signingoff/feed/1thepoetsglassafter FB.pngScholarship Versus Culture (or A Case For Dilettantes)https://thepoetsglass.com/2016/05/27/scholarship-versus-culture-or-a-case-for-dilettantes/
https://thepoetsglass.com/2016/05/27/scholarship-versus-culture-or-a-case-for-dilettantes/#respondFri, 27 May 2016 19:01:57 +0000http://thepoetsglass.com/2016/05/27/scholarship-versus-culture-or-a-case-for-dilettantes/Indeed.
]]>https://thepoetsglass.com/2016/05/27/scholarship-versus-culture-or-a-case-for-dilettantes/feed/0thepoetsglassHidden in Plain Sight: On Reflectionhttps://thepoetsglass.com/2016/02/05/596/
https://thepoetsglass.com/2016/02/05/596/#respondFri, 05 Feb 2016 01:50:57 +0000http://thepoetsglass.com/?p=596Continue reading →]]>Mirrors have interesting cultural connotations. They have been superstitiously seen as portals to another dimension through which spirits or demons can traverse, as status symbols for the wealthy to collect because silvering and glass-making technology was so difficult, rare, and new, and they have been tools for magicians to create entertaining illusions with to wow audiences by impossible acts of disappearance. However, perhaps the most philosophically fascinating of the way mirrors are imagined is as a device for seeing and discovering ourselves. We see this use of reflectivity—the throwing of an image off of a glossy surface—as early as the Greek myth of Narcissus. The reason that this story is so fascinating may be largely psychological—the tragedy of self-absorption—but the mirror itself is really the enigma in the tale. It is an object whose function is to merely show whatever is before it, to reflect it back to the viewer, but what is seen is really an inversion, and illusion.

Any animal that does not see the narrow part of the light spectrum as we see it might see something very different when looking into one of our mirrors, perhaps nothing at all; imagine how different it might look to something that sees in thermal imaging. Even more, consider how different we might imaging ourselves to look had we never been able to look at ourselves in a mirror. We would have to rely on other people’s descriptions, which are not always very detailed, accurate, or illustrative. Consider, for example, a time when after reading a book you see the film adaptation of the story and think to yourself how the actor playing one of the characters doesn’t look like what you imagined that character looked like. It is almost jarring—you formed your own portrait from the author’s description, which does not match the person playing that part. Had you never seen yourself in a mirror, you might have that kind of experience after a lifetime of descriptions that suddenly don’t correspond to your first glimpse at your own face. This is something that as we age often happens too: our internal image of self starts to slip away from the wrinkling and aging face we see in the mirror. The tool of this observation, though, is rarely considered itself.

To explore this object as a metaphor based on its denotative qualities, let us start with an example, a painting. Norman Rockwell’s piece, “Triple Self-Portrait” from 1960, offers a good subject for exploring the complex role this optic tool represents to self-awareness. (see Figure 1)

In this painting, Rockwell depicts himself as a silly, somewhat clumsy artist whose work portrays him more ideally than he really is. This self-revealing aspect is most apparent in the juxtaposition between what the viewer sees in the mirror versus what the artist in the image paints. In the reflection, Rockwell has clouded glasses with a drooping pipe in his mouth, looking a bit goofy and somewhat aloof of what is going on around him as he focuses on his likeness. In the metal bucket beside him, a thin stream of smoke rises from what is likely the ash he tapped out of the pipe, but which is still smoldering and may at any moment burst into flames. To this potential conflict, he seems utterly unaware, suggesting a bit of carelessness on his part.

The painting has the subject of the image—the artist—with his back to the viewer. This is an unusual move for a self-portrait, which is apparent in the four other recognizable self-portraiture pinned to the canvas, work by Dürer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and van Gogh. Their painted selfies contain only their faces in the frame, which Rockwell’s has three of himself: the artist sitting with his back to us, the reflection of his face looking back from the mirror, and the large painting he is sketching out on the canvas using his reflection as a reference. His actual face cannot be seen; we see only a reflection and an illustration. A pencil sketch with five variations of his own face are also pinned to the canvas, but the artist in the painting—the subject—never turns his head to show his actual face.

The reason the mirror matters in this painting is that it is an active participant in the artistic process and also in the viewer’s experience. It is the closest we can get to seeing the artist’s most identifiable feature: his face. Even so, we know that it is only a bit of smoke and mirrors, to be a bit tongue in cheek about it (his glasses are even foggy). While the reflection shows the face of the man looking into the mirror, we cannot see his eyes; they are occluded, and thus the so-called windows to his soul are veiled from us. We never get to look at him eye to eye; only he ever gets to see what is there.

Perhaps this is meant to represent the conflict that a mirror creates for the observer. While it shows us what is before it as its properties are able to throw back, we can never really see ourselves as we are. We always see something different than what others who look at us see. Our image is always an inversion, the mirror image is flipped so that the right hand of the observer is the left of the reflection. That is how two dancers can create the illusion of a mirror by facing each other and moving in synchronization. It’s an entertaining effect, but one that reveals what a mirror does: it flips the picture.

All of this really goes to show just how fascinating this object really is, and how we are easily fooled by its appearance. People rarely look at or are able to see a mirror for what it looks like because the reflection is so affective, so convincing, so pervasive. A non-reflective surface we can look at and remark on its texture, color, shape, size, and so on, but a mirror, we only ever see what it throws back at us. Its properties make it an active magician—an object that forever hides in plain sight. It is something that we appreciate for what it does rather than what it is, and something that we rarely attempt to engage beyond its surface appearance. It reveals our sensory limitations, how easily the mind is tricked into looking at itself, and just how shallow our observations really are. In some ways, then, the mirror may be argued to be the least understood and most ignored of objects: we never look on it for itself, but only to find ourselves, and never give it credit for its work but often blame it for not showing us what we want to see. It is loved for the same reason it is hated—because we used it only to find ourselves. Rockwell, too, abused his mirror, enslaving it to his art but never giving it an image of its own. Then again, what artist can make a mirror a subject without its reflection getting in the way?

I read or dreamt somewhere
that friendship is an honor
set upon you—that deep part
of life you experience expansively,
a moral extension that creates
the value of living well.

Perhaps I made it up,
like a song that has been
stuck in memory, a trust
imagination endowed for you,
like those many years I know
because I’ve spent them
on this story we’ve shared
authorship of—so many sorrows
dark as the night between some stars
where artistry dares to craft
melodious and lyrical bars—
better versions of ourselves,
and so vividly I never failed to reject
the very essence of their truth.

We’re less brazen now, more dangerous.

Sometimes I wonder how to tell
the vivid stories of how my heart
has learned to love you—
because I do—although, even when
I didn’t know, I always knew.

It was only the words I didn’t have
that said friendship is more true
than the books I read about science
and psychology, the sensory cortex
and biology, all the reflexes
of simple topography—the many gaps
of memory and meaning, the syntax
of community, what your companionship
and your body has taught me
about how to live better just because
there are times worth trusting
in the constancy of drawing up movements
so rich they could only be
choreographed by you.

Today’s your birthday—it is a little all.
And we would have a care to dance
and smile for you a while longer.

It is an honor, my friend, to have
a few words to spend on your memory
because this is the writing of it
while it lives here with me, with us.

This little dance of rhetoric is
little more than a pedantic wit
in demonstration of how important
your living craft invests in all of us.

While I am just a humble poet,
your craftiness has saved me more
than a few times; although, these words
are but a token of that truth.

Happy birthday, Oracle.
All of these stars, all this light,
not the darkness between these points—
the magic of seeing them:
these are candles lit for you.

Today we light your torches.
Tonight we burn the clocks.

You owe us and them nothing, though you
spend it all on this city and your friends,
and so tonight we send you off with this—
every breath performs its peace for you.
We will never, now, have you to lose.

]]>https://thepoetsglass.com/2015/10/24/aurora-the-city-is-yours/feed/1thepoetsglassOn Companionshiphttps://thepoetsglass.com/2015/10/13/on-companionship/
https://thepoetsglass.com/2015/10/13/on-companionship/#respondTue, 13 Oct 2015 17:37:48 +0000http://thepoetsglass.com/?p=516Continue reading →]]>I’ve kissed her more times than snow
has fallen, thought her more beautiful
than the greatest masters’ masterpieces
have always wanted to be–seen: what we
like to believe Helen was worthy of, but she is.
I’ve seen her stretch more perfectly
than the autumn day is cool and warm;
she tries to teach me how she bends gravity,
but I never listen. I’ve loved her twice in one
lifetime and folded that love in my mind,
the furnace of in-formative memory–
hammered it out, and made a sharper, cleaner,
more refined blade to cut my heart on.
Once, I read a whole population
of sonnets about a man who loved another man
like I love my Cordelia. It was pure, deep, honest.
His ghost haunts me like a mad lover–a poet–would:
in songs and romantic dramas. He and his beloved,
I imagine, their bodies probably danced
various choreographies, like she and I often do.
She taught me to trust; that is enough. I’m lucky
she needed someone to find her. Just then,
I needed a strong soul to save me from needing
to be saved; she plays that part too well.
I’ve always needed someone alive enough
I could learn to live with me too. She let’s me
think it’s all me. She is the artist in the house,
and I study her with all the unrefinement of my species,
but she forgives often and let’s me kiss her face
while she shows the shadows how to be dense.
]]>https://thepoetsglass.com/2015/10/13/on-companionship/feed/0DancingthepoetsglassWhat Cognitive Neuroscience Can Do for English Professorshttps://thepoetsglass.com/2015/04/25/what-cognitive-neuroscience-can-do-for-english-professors/
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]]>https://thepoetsglass.com/2015/04/25/what-cognitive-neuroscience-can-do-for-english-professors/feed/0thepoetsglassProposal Cisco College C5 Conference ProposalNew Poem Publishedhttps://thepoetsglass.com/2015/04/13/new-poem-published/
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